Language Can Be Pleasant Play and Also Lead to the Development of Great Adults.

Do Adults Benefit from a Childlike Use of Language? Children play with language. They can benefit greatly from pleasant talk with an adult.

        Children do it for pleasure. They seem to enjoy trying new uses for pleasure more than we do. Sometimes upon examination and adult may see language as an invitation to play. Play may be an invitation to language, but that may be an invitation to another essay. It may well be that life is an invitation to both language and play.

            Let me continue a look into childhood experience in language. It looks like or sounds like children use their self-talk to associate sound with both structure and meaning.If you have an opportunity to do so, listen to a child talking alone in his or her activity. We usually call that activity play. A keen observer may note that there seems to be structure, function, and order in word play of the youngest. They appear to enjoy their use of language to construct representations of reality. They seem to do so for the fun of it.

        We are amazing. Even the vary young among us are amazing. Very young children seem to be open to alternative formulations of experience in their play. They toy with ideas and they toy with making up happenings and doings. Think of yourself for a bit. You discover some of your own present day toying and playing, and perhaps prevarications. Don't be too hard on yourself. Some of your most creative and productive thought may be much like this.

        So talk, including self talk, plays an organizing role in adult life as well as in childhood. There may be delight in an utterance of even an adult. Higher forms of mental activity begin their development as a process between two people; much of it between an adult and a child. But early on the development can be between a child and itself. Much of our development continues with talk among adults and even self talk within one adult.

        Mature thinking in a child, as you may imagine, begins as that child stats to see things from other points of view as well as from his or her own. Some adults seem to forget much of the value of this sort of thought. As human beings we are often much like children. At times I realize that I gain satisfaction from speech now, much as I di as a child. A child needs to feel confidence in a home place so as to better feel confidence abroad. The talk between child and adult at home is important. That talk experience as a child at home continues to support us now.

        We continue for life to learn much and to better our language usage. However, there does seem to be a golden time for language learning is done with greater ease and pleasure, and at that time is done to better effect. That is childhood learning may affect the quality of ones speech for life. 

        As adults we may find some easy pleasure in speaking with our children, even infant and even with other children in our lives which can improve the quality of their entire lives. With that pleasant talk we may give them some pleasure in our company and help them grow into more competent adults.